


The Painter

by annasfreckles



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Cigarettes, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Smoking, i legit thought this up randomly on my way home from school, vague melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-04 23:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14030733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annasfreckles/pseuds/annasfreckles
Summary: Early in the morning on the balconies of a run-down apartment complex, two worlds intertwine for just the briefest of glances.





	The Painter

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, look who's not dead.
> 
> I'm sorry it's been so long. I started school last fall and it's taken over my soul. I've just had very little motivation to do much writing. I have not abandoned IKYO or Promise, I will get them done, or at least try to. I've made a post about it on my tumblr (tho you may have to dig thru a ton of reblogs to get to it, but it's there).
> 
> Anyways, to satiate you guys, have a thing that just came to me as I was coming home from school. The writing is rusty because it's been a while, but, I hope you all still enjoy it. I have a lot of ideas for this one but I'm gonna leave it here. For now. But please don't ask me to write more; if I want to, I will.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Warnings: Mention of self-harm, lots of cigarette smoking. If you think I've missed anything, please let me know.

She savored these dark, quiet moments.

Anna leaned against the balcony railing, looking out across the complex. Most of the other apartments had their doors closed, lights off. A few were different, doors open to let in the early morning air, lights turning on as people got up for their shifts. Some had their lights on all night, not bothering to sleep, or like Anna, not able to.

She could see movements in some of them. One woman walked out to her balcony to check on her laundry she had strung up. A young couple walked out to the balcony to take in the fresh air, mugs of coffee in hands. She watched the man set his down and stand behind his girlfriend, or wife, or maybe just fuck buddy, wrapping his arms around her from behind. A light note of laughter came floating up from the balcony, letting Anna know she was enjoying this. In another apartment, a young man had been sitting at the table, reading a book over coffee and an early breakfast.

Anna took a deep drag from her cigarette and watched the smoke trail off into the darkness.

All around her, there was the sights and sounds of other life. Besides what she saw, she could hear music coming from one apartment on her side. She could hear the thrum of a vacuum cleaner from upstairs, right on time. She could hear somebody yelling in another apartment farther down on the other side, out of anger or excitement, she couldn’t tell. It was too faint for her to really be able to catch anything. Behind her, she could hear Hans’ deep snoring. Around her, outside of the apartments, the nightlife of Arendelle City was still going strong, turning into the early morning bustle. The running engines and sharp honking of constant traffic, pulsing club music, pedestrian chatter, she could hear it all. Sharp, drunk laughter rose up from nearby as she heard distantly a group of early-twenty-somethings, probably college students, returning home after a fun and busy night.

Anna smiled despite herself, raising her cigarette to her lips for another smoke. She remembered those nights.

Hans snored loudly behind her and the smile washed away.

Anna sighed and looked down at her arms. Scars painted across from her elbow up to her wrist. Stark, dry-red zigzags blotched with ash-like cigarette burns. Anna ran a thumb across one, feeling the rough skin, and frowned. There was no more pain when she touched it now. She sighed again and looked up across the apartments, taking another drag.

There was a lot to see, a lot to hear, in this corner-of-nowhere she called home. Once upon a time, she found it thrilling. It helped ground her, helped her realize how alive the world actually was. Now it was just white noise. It was an empty promise of what life could have been. But old habits die hard and she still found herself getting up early to watch as the world stirred and people went about their own lives.

She didn’t actually care for them. Nowadays, she cared for very little.

The light in the apartment across from hers turned on.

Anna watched through the smoke of her cigarette as a shadow walked across the living room and pulled back the curtains. Tall, blonde, with long shapely legs revealed herself, a simple jacket and short shorts as way of pajamas. She opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony, giving the whole place one good look over. Anna took another drag from her cigarette and kept watching.

The woman—Elsa was her name, as Anna recalled—sat down at the easel propped proudly on her balcony. Many of her paintings were hung up nearby, out of some kind of declaration to this small broken world of an apartment complex, though Anna couldn’t be sure what. Everything about Elsa exuded a regal sense of pride that she envied, but she also sensed a softness, a delicate love for all things that she craved. Anna watched her smile at whatever stood before her on the easel, preparing herself for the next journey.

Elsa hung up the painting next to the previous day’s work, then replaced it with a blank canvas. Sitting down, she got her palette ready—and nothing else. Anna found it strange how she never used brushes, just her fingers. She thought someone as clean and immaculate as Elsa would hate to muddy her skin with anything but she had watched her, time and time again, mixing in the pads of her fingers and even the palm of her hand with a myriad of different colors until they were all smeared in, resembling some strange, muddy goop that could barely be said to hold any color at all.

Anna was fascinated by Elsa and she wasn’t quite sure why. Well, that was a lie. It was clear why this woman grabbed her attention so much. Other than being drop-dead gorgeous, she was mysterious. She never socialized with the other neighbors outside of maybe a hello or goodbye, and as far as anybody knew she didn’t have a day job. She spent all her time in her apartment and the few times anybody saw her were when she was leaving her apartment, arriving at her apartment, or when she sat out on her balcony to paint. Anna didn’t even know she lived there until the two bumped into each other, quite literally, while getting mail. Elsa had looked away and mumbled an awkward sort of apology before dashing out of sight, and Anna found herself still standing there five minutes later, lost in the bright blue eyes she had seen staring back at her.

Since then, Anna had tried her damnedest to get a good glimpse of her. She saw her racing off from her apartment one day but lost track of her quickly after that. Nobody knew where she went as she was never seen at any of the stores and in fact it seemed she got most of her stuff delivered to her. Anna thought she saw her at the bank once but it was only the back of her head and she left too quickly for her to make sure. Eventually, while out smoking, Anna caught her in the apartment directly across from hers, painting away at her canvas, the brightest, most radiant smile on her face.

In the moment, Anna thought her heart had stopped. She had never seen a more beautiful, more genuine smile in all her life.

“What do you think makes her so happy?” Anna asked Hans absentmindedly one day, staring out to Elsa’s balcony from inside the apartment.

“Probably the fact that she’s single.” Hans replied dully, his eyes never leaving the television screen. “Quit staring at her, she’s gonna think you’re a creep.”

But Anna never stopped her nightly rituals. Not that she could even if she wanted to. Anna always went out to the balcony for a smoke around this time, to get away from everything. The small closed space of the apartment, Hans’ smell and voice and general presence, the haunting loneliness of… well, everything. She needed to get away, and she worried if she went out the front door she’d wake up Hans. And that was a conversation she didn’t want to have again.

So her solace was the balcony, her literal window to other worlds. What she couldn’t see, she heard, and what she couldn’t hear, she felt. Arendelle City became alive in this little space and she relished it.

And above all, she got to see her. Elsa.

Elsa was looking at her canvas, her face scrunched up. Anna bit her lip to fight back a smile. It was an adorable, silly face she never thought would fit so perfectly on someone as gorgeous as Elsa. The woman seemed to be struggling with the painting, or an idea. She still hadn’t actually done any painting. The woman’s shoulders sagged in a frustrated sigh, and her eyes panned over the complex.

And met with Anna’s.

She could see the woman freeze, her whole body tensing. Now she knew that somebody had been watching her, somebody had seen her. Anna could see the panic flying through her, the different mental stages of trying to decide what to do. Her body seemed to hover on the edge of running away and Anna felt a sharp pain in her chest at the familiarity of it. She ignored her heart as it tripled in its beat, casually flicked her cigarette, and then raised it for another smoke.

Elsa kept staring at her, as if waiting for something. Anna exhaled the cigarette smoke and raised her free hand in a two-fingered salute, as casually as she could while her hands shook.

The spell seemed to break then and Elsa’s body started to relax. She smiled a shy, soft smile, and waved back. Anna took in a trembling inhale and smoked the last of her cigarette. She put out it out in her ashtray, and then just stood there. Suddenly, she realized she had been waiting for something, too. Elsa still sat there, staring at her, and not at her easel.

Finally, Anna turned to the pack of cigarettes she had left on the table. She pulled one out, snatched her lighter, and leaned back against the railing. She lit her cigarette, the flame sparkling like a star in the early morning darkness. Then she exhaled, the smoke trailing off and obscuring her face.

When the smoke cleared, Elsa had returned to her easel. Her fingers danced across the palette as she smeared in reds and blues, greys and blacks, some dark orange. Her eyes never left the painting. She was back in her own world, and Anna was left to be a distant observer once again.

Right where she belonged.


End file.
